Prevention beats incarcerating kids

For 14 years, Wansley Walters worked to whittle the numbers of baby-faced delinquents behind bars in Miami-Dade. Her blueprint for first-time misdemeanor offenders: swap jail time for prevention and counseling.

It's hard to argue with results and it would be foolish for lawmakers to try, now that Walters, now secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Justice, is pushing to scale up the reforms statewide in a philosophical makeover of the agency's calling.

She recently unveiled draft legislation to the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee. It would overhaul laws governing DJJ and emphasize data-driven alternatives to arrest and incarceration.

"There's a role for detention and a role for deep-end residential placement," says Walters. "We are dealing with almost 100,000 juveniles a year, and the vast majority of them don't need to be down at the end of the pool" where the risk of becoming serial offenders is greatest.

Rather than put nonviolent first offenders in detention, her plan would have police issue civil citations — as 51 counties already do. And citations work. Fewer than 6 percent of youth cited re-offended within a year, according to Walters.

It's a smart strategy that would break what David J. Utter, a Miami-based policy and legislative director for Southern Poverty Law Center, calls Florida's "addiction to arresting kids from our schools that doesn't make us safer."

However, it does make taxpayers poorer. By avoiding arrests, Walters, in her Miami days, realized a $5,000-per-child cost savings — or $20.2 million annually for Miami-Dade. Statewide, the savings not only would give help DJJ's sagging budget — it recently took a $54.5 million hit — but could be invested on the front end in prevention.

Misdemeanor offenders would be diverted to therapeutic options within their own communities. That helps avoid the effects of institutionalization and minimizes the loss of their support systems.

Given the majority of wayward kids simply need guidance and a second chance, lawmakers ought to allow the agency to explore proven options.